Sage, Honey & Pecorino Heart Bread

In January, I stated that one of my “I Dare cooking challenges for 2007” was to make bread. So when “Waiter, There’s Something in My….” challenge for April is Bread, I knew it was meant to be!

I started flipping through April’s (Italian) issue of Sale e Pepe, and I stumbled on this recipe, “Pane con miele, salvia e pecorino” – Bread with honey, sage and pecorino cheese. A golden brown with flecks of green sage, it looked delicious and complex, and I was craving a bit of complexity in my bread – I love the Acme bread back in SF.

Then I realized I had a big problem.

I’ve gotten much better at working with grams in recipes, but until now I’ve scraped by without a scale. Until I had to measure relatively small amounts of liquid like oil and honey. Argh! So I redoubled my promise to myself to buy a scale at the next opportunity and did a few frantic searches on the internet before I decided to eyeball a few measurements.

The yeast I used didn’t need to be prepared beforehand and was mixed in directly with the flour, 25g (2T.) olive oil, the sugar and 250ml of water. Add the pinch of salt (5g) and continue kneading for about ten minutes. This dough was a lot of fun to mix – the yeast kept it light and it was very responsive!

Form it into a ball, make a cross-like incision on it, cover it and leave it in a warm place for an hour. Then, deflate the dough and mix in the grated pecorino (I grated mine into very thin ribbons – courtesy of my microplane ribbon grater), the finely chopped sage and the honey.

It got a little slippery here with the honey, but when it’s mixed thoroughly, divide the dough into two halves and form two long cylinders with your hands – be careful here as they can start sticking to each other before it’s necessary! The recipe wants you to intertwine them in the form of a circle, but I chose instead to do a heart shape.

Transfer the bread to its baking pan, lined with parchment paper and leave it rise for another 30 minutes. Cook in the oven at 200C for around 35 minutes. (Note on this: it started to get pretty dark for me around 30 minutes and I took it out – so keep an eye on it!)

The recipe in the magazine calls for a side garnish with fava beans, puntarelle (a type of chicory) and more pecorino, but when I started cleaning the fava beans, I realized the bread was perfect how it was but maybe it needed a little more pecorino. I decided to whip up a little spread for it. Plus, when I was cleaning the beans, I started feeling bad for them. What a comfortable little bed they have inside their pod!

Pecorino garnish
60g pecorino
A few tablespoons honey
Milk

In a food processor, blend the pecorino and honey, adding a little milk to make it bit more spreadable. This will not smooth in consistency. Apply a thin layer to fresh, hot bread!

This bread didn’t last very long in the house – it was gone in a few hours! It was very good and I think next time I might even grate the cheese a bit coarser as a few of the little chunks got mixed in and were a nice surprise when you found them. I’m glad that I Dared this time around. Ilva, where are you on your promises??